


Love, Honour and Obey

by icarus_chained



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Honor, Infidelity, Marriage, Oaths & Vows, Prompt Fic, Trust, fidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2602286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone, the Iron Queen. She is more feared and honoured now than loved, but she is not to be pitied for it. Indeed, she is to be envied, for those gifts she has won unequalled in all the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love, Honour and Obey

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt of: "She prefers to be honoured than loved." It seemed to fit Hades/Persephone?

In a strange way, she was to be envied, she thought. 

She was not the greatest queen among the gods. She had married no lord of a brighter realm. She dwelt half in darkness and in death, she stood beside the sternest of the gods, she had won fear and respect to equal his own. She had been bound to shadows, and bound them to herself in turn. She was no more the young maiden in her mother's garden, innocent and beloved. She was the Iron Queen, she was Persephone, she was the goddess of the dead. She was honoured, now, and not beloved. 

And yet. Yet, she thought, she must be envied more than pitied for it. She must be envied by every goddess, every mortal, great and small, for in this she had something that even those queens of greater power and brighter realms had not. In this honour that was her bride-price, she had won a gift unequalled.

Fidelity. Alone among his brothers, her husband did not dishonour her. Alone among them, _her_ king, though he had stolen her, would not betray her. His heart, as hollow as it was, was hers and hers alone. Only once had she questioned that, only once been given cause. Once, and never since.

She remembered his expression, that day on the riverbank. She remembered the look in his eyes as he stood above a plant that had moments before been a woman, a nymph, who had laid her hands on what _was not hers_. Her husband had stared at that plant, at Minthe, and then he had looked at her. At Persephone, who was his wife.

She had expected guilt. She had expected anger. She had feared, perhaps, something worse, something reminiscent of her father, her husband's brother, an indifference to all save the thwarting of his lust. She had expected all those things, and feared them, and stood ready to vent her wrath upon them. No maiden was she now, no more the innocent he had won, but a queen powerful and feared in her own right, and she would have showed it then. She would have won fear from him, who was her husband, had he only given her cause.

But he had not. He had not. He had looked at her, and in his eyes she had seen remorse, and pity, and that strange, hollow thing that was his love. His honour, freely offered, and the respect that had become her due. No more, and nothing less.

"You are mine," she had said, stern and terrible before him. "As I am yours, husband, you are _mine_. You will grant me the honour that is my due."

And he had not flinched. Not that day, and no day since. He had never flinched from her, nor from the honour demanded of him, nor from the love that answered it. He had given all that he had been asked, surrendered all that had been her due, and strangely, she thought him almost happy for it. She thought, at times, that there was a brightness in him for it, a joy at what she won from him.

Not so strange, perhaps. Her husband, stern and terrible, wealthy and feared, the third greatest of all kings. She had asked him not for queenship, she had asked him not for wealth, she had asked him not for power. She had asked for something no-one in all their world had wanted, before her. She had asked for something granted not even to the greatest queens, the wives of greater gods, something that he alone could grant and something she wanted from only him.

She had asked for honour. She had asked for fidelity. She had asked for _him_.

And all of them, from that moment, he had granted.

No. No, she was no more the beloved child. She was no more the innocent maid. She was stern, now, and feared. She was strong and stark and terrible, with her husband by her side. She was Persephone, she was the Iron Queen, she was the wife and only love of Hades, who had bound himself to her as she to him. She was the Lady of the Halls of the Dead, and above all else, she was _honoured_ , as no other queen in all the world.

There was naught to be pitied in that, she thought, her husband's hand strong and cold in hers, and his hollow heart nestled safely in her breast. 

Nothing to be pitied, and everything, an infinity, to be envied.

**Author's Note:**

> ... Given his family, that Hades has only once even attempted infidelity is fairly impressive, I've always thought. And even that depends on the version of the myth, I think, since I've seen it said that it was Minthe trying to seduce him rather than the other way around. Either way, though. He's more faithful than most, in an odd sort of way.


End file.
